My Art
In my collage art, I jigsaw ostentatious history with bricolage memories. Framed adventures through space and time that I hope can change your centre of gravity, even for a moment. And if they don't, it's not for lack of trying. My over the top surrealism is too much. Intentionally offensive to good taste, it chews on fine art and blows out post-modern bubbles like a toothache assault on the senses. All reminding us how chintzy classicism was before the colours faded.
As for truth, every piece I create is true. Sourced from truth and grounded by it. But never real. Reality's a fiction we're all subscribed to, which doesn’t make it untrue. Truth moves in many directions. Just like the past. Never sitting still or doing as they're told. Forever questioned, dissected, reframed and upended. Queered and inverted. Packaged and performed. Told, retold, adapted then sold. Evolving, like everything else. Which is why I like to think my art exists outside of time. A kaleidoscope of mish-mashed truth that's only as surreal as you choose to make it…
The Tall Tale
Some places open up to you right from the start. And my first time in Bangkok was an embrace. It was 2002—not so long ago but worlds apart from now. I was 19. Ready for anything but never even considering myself in all that. How my own reflection would tilt & shift in this far-flung latitude. A canvas for my daydreams between childhood and adulthood. That time when you know too much without knowing how to settle the adrenaline of knowledge.
How could I have known I’d still be friends with folks I met on my 2nd visit to Bangkok? In 2003, en route to London. People I saw every time I visited for 6yr after that. People I still see when I can. People I’ll know until one of us croaks. People that are friends with other friends of mine, looping back to this stream of consciousness with however many degrees of Kevin Bacon you want for breakfast.
Bangkok isn't just my second home. It is home. You can have more than one across a lifetime, and I've stitched memories for decades in the other city of angels. Crafting a personal mythology in this build-it-up, tear-it-down metropolis with a double rainbow energy that can swallow you whole. Overlapping you with history. A wildflower city that's literally sinking from the kinetic energy of 11 million souls. Blending gold rush energy with fish sauce in the air.